Thursday, July 19, 2012

Since I went dark, I've been getting emails about coming back. It made me feel good to know that people appreciated my prose. I want to get that out. I was sincerely touched by the sentiment. Selfishly, it made me feel good to know that some people liked my writing. I view myself as a hack; that some of you saw me as possessing some modicum of talent makes my chest swell.

But I also didn't get any six figure offers to come back. And to continue to do this for free, I have to have some higher reason to do so.

The reason I have done it for so long is, as cheesy as this sounds, is the love I have for the Flames. I was born in Calgary. Calgary is therefore my team. It's that hood loyalty, holmes.

But the people currently running the Flames...I can't get with any longer. Murray Edwards and his pet Ken King have run this franchise into the ground. They are small men with small, entirely conventional visions; Men who don't wish for glory, but rather for profit. Men who don't see the fans as people unto which they should deliver a winning product, but rather as people from whom they can extract dollars.

I can no longer provide these people with even the small amount of oxygen my writing gives them. I refuse to be Maple Leafed. I'm not playing along anymore.

Through my writings on the Flames, I think it is fair to say I have shown the media in Calgary to be cowards; Pat Stienboring admitting that he needs to have his questions vetted by the Flames before they make a player available to him for an interview, that he is fine with it, and that he lets some PR stooge in the Flames front office basically give him an approved list of questions to ask in an interview is a clear illustration of the principle. That corporate tool Macfarlane's article, where he literally wrote "Who Cares" as a defence to someone like Ken King, who has zero qualifications to be running a hockey team, running the hockey team, was a spit in the eye of the people paying attention. But that is the attitude of the media. They like being able to schmooze and go to free hockey games, so they report what they are told, and respond with 'How high?' when told to jump.

I'm not going to do their job for them any longer. If they want to be boot licking propaganda peddlers in the day (and bitch to me about having to do it at night) that's their business. I'm not playing anymore.

Jay Feaster responding to the question of 'Why don't you rebuild?' with 'I think it's funny that the people calling for rebuild have no skin in the game' says it all. Again, these people don't care about anything but milking the fans for more money. And I'm not going to help keep people interested.

Ken King is the GM of the team. He is because he doesn't mind letting Murray Edwards play with his toy. The media didn't make that clear. I did. Without access. It was that obvious. And yet you still have the useful idiots in this city who battle against this revelation. I've given you the rhetorical tools to take on these...tools. You don't need me, anymore. And I'm not going to keep wasting my time with the sheep.

There is no better illustration of the disgrace that cronyism has brought to this franchise than the fact Rob Kerr calls the Flames games.

Why am I wasting my time with a franchise that lets Rob Kerr call their televised games? That let's Matt Stajan wear the jersey? How can I respect a team that doesn't respect itself?

I can't. And so, I'm done.

I'm not going to be the opposing voice anymore. If you guys are happy buying expensive tickets to go eat stale popcorn, drink overpriced beer and watch bad, boring hockey, power to you. But I'm done with it. It isn't cute to me.

When the Flames come on TV, I'm going to my outdoor rink to actually play hockey. It's more enjoyable.

In short, I have better shit to do than waste my time with a loser. When the Flames do what is necessary to win, IE: when the Flames bring in some people to the front office who know what they are doing, I'll be interested again.

But this current path? This doing enough to be 10th - 7th? Nope. Not for me.

Now before I go, I do want to shout out to the people I did meet through blogging. I never expected to make any friends out of this, but I did. The world is a wacky place. I think you guys know who are. Thanks for everything.

I'll probably keep the twitter up as a release. And I'll probably be back this way again, as I do like writing, and I know the password to this place. But for now, I'm done.

Let's remember the good times: Domebeer-aholics, we did get Loubardias fired. We can always enjoy that scalp.